Marionette
by jessOKlein
Summary: Earth is invaded by another life form called the Others. With their abnormal intelligence that beats that of a person's, they send deadly attacks on the people of Earth in four Waves, wiping out nearly the whole human population. Rose is one of the few survivors left. She spent months alone in the unknown Canadian forest, wondering if she will survive to wake up the next morning.
1. Prologue

I hate sleeping under the exposed sky littered in billions upon billions of stars staring back at me. I hated the stars even before the Others- one of my many issues. Who knew priorities can change so radically? Back in the day I would worry about my next performance, or another week at school with tests and god-forsaken schoolmates, or Grandad's health. Now the task is simple: Stay alive. Don't die.

Not that I didn't consider death as an option. It seems like the easiest getaway from this world the Others claimed as their domain and morphed it into their own image. They must be the most disgusting creatures alive, then. To them humans are only rodents that leave mess and rubbish wherever they go, tarnishing the good lands. What does the owner of the house do? Gets out the bug spray. The idea of them owning us is bone-chilling.

However, they didn't get the bug spray and finish the job quickly- they needed to get their hands dirty, ripping every single hair out of our heads, piece by piece, then moved to other parts for a slow and painful death.

My point is dying the easy way is what the Others would probably expect of us. That's not what the billions of people died for. If I go down, I go down standing (hopefully like those superheroes in the action films and not like a dog getting a treat) and fighting all the way. No quitting.

When the world was ending, I had my rucksack. The same one I would take to all my after-school classes every Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

I spent hours at the same studio every week and I'm pretty sure if someone, for whatever reason, dropped me there blindfolded I would find my way to any place I needed- the lockers, the changing room, the bathroom, the gym and the mirrored studio with barres at every wall and an older wooden piano right from the glass door.

So at 3:40 on the mentioned days I walked down the avenue in my worn-out combat boots (I never liked trainers), jeans and army jacket, carrying nothing but my house keys, a passed-on mobile phone, ID card in a hidden pocket above the breast of my jacket and a black rucksack.

My phone was rended useless in the First Wave, my ID got washed away in the Second Wave, and my keys got nicked sometimes during that interval. The rucksack is still with me, though, with all its possessions from the good-old days.

I wish the stars weren't so cowardly, hiding behind the green blob of the Mothership, owned by the Others. It's easy messing with us from so high up, isn't it? How about you get your shining galactic arses down here and face us? Us, as in humanity. Or what's left of it. I hope I'm not all that's left. That would be a bad joke. Really, really, really lame. Any person -or thing- with that sort of humor is plain cruel.

x Dictionary x

Trainers- sneakers

Nicked- stole


	2. 1 Sleepless Nights Chapter I

I'm sick of this. Sleep isn't coming. No surprise there. I get up, brush some twigs and pieces of grass from my hair and clothes and pick up the sorry-excuse-for-a blanket from the ground. "Don't forget your muffler," Grandma cautioned before our drive to the airport, referring to the blanket-and-wool hybrid. "You never know. Canada might be chilly."

Thanks, Grandma, I use your gift as a matrace. And anyway, it's not that cold. The night temperatures of Canada can't compete with the average London mid-day ones. You kind of get immune, you know?

I roll up the woolen blanket into a tight bundle that reminds me of a burrito and stuff it into my rucksack. There's nothing much in it anymore. Most of my things I either lost or someone nicked. Forgetting something wasn't an option. Not in this case.

The bag always contained the exact same things when it rested between my shoulder blades on my way down Fifth Avenue to my dance classes. A protein bar, bottle of water, deodorant, mint pack, hair brush, headphones, pins and rubber bands, a small towel and most important of all-- my ballerina slippers.

Back when the green blotch of the Mothership didn't track my every movement and I wasn't homeless I got a new pair of ballet shoes with silk lacing and all that for my birthday. I really loved them. I had them at rehearsals two or three times and decided to leave them at the changing room overnight. Besides, that's what the other girls did.

I came back a few days later and they were gone, lost, nowhere in sight. I couldn't stop crying. Our teacher had to call my grandparents to pick me up. It took a while for me to get over them. Better said, it took for my grandparents to buy me a new pair to be satisfied.

Hence forward I always carried my ballerina shoes with me in the plain black rucksack. Our trip to Canada wasn't an exception. I admit in that case I forgot to take them out. It seemed natural for them to be gently tied together in it.

As of the present state of the rucksack's contents there are a few new additions: more gallons of water, canned food I found in a robbed petrol station, a book of sonnets from Ma, and a pistol. Not my laced shoes anymore. In the Third Wave my lether combat boots slowed me down too much -more than I can afford- so I ditched them and ran. It's sort of all that's left for me to do so that I feel somewhat useful. I run, as if I can outrun my problems.

If you tried it you will know running barefoot over the forest ground with pines and pebbles and twigs and all that grime is plain painful. Not that ballerina slippers are any better but it's an advantage on my part and advantages are fatal to survival.

Here I am, in the middle of a Canadian forest in shredded jeans, a dust and mud caked hoodie, black/ brown ballerina shoes (they used to be a pastel pink) and a black rucksack. I walk like a ninja, hopping from tree to tree as if in that way I can avoid being spotted by drones that fly across the sky 24/7 watching us, predicting our next move, keeping track of us pitiful humans and reporting back to the Mothership.

I often find myself wondering how things would have been if Grandma wasn't so superstitious and let us, Grandad and I, stay home, in Britain. The answer is quite obvious. We lived too close to the coastline. The little cottage-like house probably got destroyed and washed away like my ID in the Second Wave. Stay--die. Run--die. Do anything in this bloody world--die. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die. It's a dead end. Ha! pun.

I cringe at myself. Why do I even bother?

I skip over a fallen tree log and my lace tie around my ancle gets caught on a branch mid-jump and I hug the ground. With my face. Ugh.

I set my foot free and spit soil from my mouth. I feel like gagging. I don't know why I didn't just rip the silk lacing off the shoes. Maybe because I'm so used to feeling the (once soft) material hugging my lower calf. Maybe they help the shoes stay on. Maybe it's just a weird habit of tying it. Maybe I'm too weak-- both physically and internally.

I haven't had a proper meal in months and now the only thing louder than my heart slamming a sledgehammer into my ribcage (even it's scared out of it's teeny-weeny mind) is my stomach screaming in outrage. "Feed me you annoying accented bugger!" it would yell, trying to call the snipers that haunt these grounds at me. "At least they have food!"

I sprint past an open clearing. I feel exposed. Hungry. Knackered. Exhausted. Scared. Sad. Upset. Caged. Everything aches. My feet are burning. My old wounds are reopening and fresh blood is dripping from the most irritated places.

I bet if I didn't do ballet I might have lasted longer. The ugliest part of a ballerina are her feet, bruised and always tormented with effort, decorated by bandages and plasters, someone once said. If they hadn't pointed it out to me I might not have felt so self-conscious about my feet.

My only problem is what other people think. Always was. How ironic that there's no one around to judge me anymore. I used to think that only an inhuman force could stop the bullying. Years later bippity-boppity-boom! alien invasion. Really poetic.

I step over a rotting fence and scan my surroundings. Small houses, tinier gardens, hoards of bodies. They're everywhere, just like the smell of the plague-- rotting milk.

People made many names for the sickness that starts with an illness, escalates to drastic fevers and resolves in bleeding from anywhere possible-- the mouth, the nose, the eyes and even the ears. It causes people to die howling in agony as their humanity is forcefully snatched from the victims. Trust me, I would know.

In result I have grown to hate the stench as much as the stars. They always follow me, they're always there, they're always perfect and they do absolutely nothing. Hate hate hate.

I avoid the bodies and if I accidentally step on one I mutter "sorry" as if they can hear me and feel pain. Before the Fourth Wave I was at this camp. There were about fifteen of us there. Six kids younger than me, eight older.

Everyone said the dead were the luckiest. On the next day I went for a walk and when I came back, the camp was flattened with the ground. I realized if I left my bag there it would have blown up with the rest of the dead-- the lucky. I mean, I assumed it was blown up. What else could have taken it out so quickly?

When I pass the last corpse I let out a breath I hadn't noticed I was holding and stop in my tracks. I might be paranoid -how can one not be?- but I think a twig popped and it wasn't my doing.

I shove my hand into the rucksack and yank out the gun, aiming infront of me, using both my hands to steady it. Right, left, right, left, turn, right, left, right, left, turn . . . The pattern repeats till a jet-black crow hops out of the bushes, his endlessly indifferent eyes showing a hint of mockery.

I sigh and my heart slows. Just in case I put the pistol in my jeans' pocket. "Ha-ha," I say with a roll of the eyes. "Very funny." You know something's wrong when a girl in ballerina shoes has a pistol and is talking to a 'mocking' bird. I kick in its direction and it screeches in protest before flying away, nearly hitting me in the head with its sleek wings.

Another thing I hate-- birds. They spread the plague. Bastards. The only reason why I didn't shoot this one is because I don't want to make too much noise. No need to get unwanted attention at myself. I never sought anyone's attention yet still earned a nickname: attention whore. I never spoke with anyone and was called a slut. I didn't even wear black and was still known as the emo freak. It's not fair.

Sometimes, beneath the stars, I wish I was one of the lucky. The stars are lucky. The dead are lucky. I could be lucky too. I could always be there, untouchable, bright, stunning and perfect.

Dictionary

Muffler- scarf

Knackered- tired


End file.
